Fixed income trade facility generates P437.9-B trades

The total value of trades posted at the Philippine Dealing & Exchange Corp. (PDEX) amounted to P437.85 billion last year.

The PDEX serves as the venue for an efficient, stable, and secure market for the trading of securities by providing a centralized fixed income trading facility. This infrastructure will promote price discovery and transparency, provide businesses equitable access to public funds, create a deeper investor base, and promote an active secondary market for fixed-income securities.

Out of the total trades, value turnover on fixed rate treasury notes was highest at 81.6 percent or P357.22 billion; treasury bills at 12.9 percent or P56.53 billion; and retail treasury bonds at 5.5 percent or P24.09 billion.

According to the PDEX, the top five months with the highest monthly value turnover were May (P86.86 billion), followed by the months of April (P61.18 billion), November (P60.44 billion), June (P59.55 billion) and July (P46.19 billion).

The month with the lowest value turnover and number of transactions, on the other hand, was December, earning only 4.77 percent of the annual total.

The single-day record for the highest trading volume was posted last May 27, amounting to P9 billion.

Since the start of its operations, the fixed-income negotiated dealing platform of PDEX executed a total of 6,263 trades. This translated into an average daily value turnover of P2.19 billion or a monthly value turnover of P48.1 billion.

The first phase of the fixed-income trading platform implemented the inter-dealer negotiated deal market for government securities. Traders use the screen terminals of the fixed-income trader workstations (FITW) of PDEx to communicate, negotiate and deal with each other. This minimizes, if not totally eliminates, errors in verbal or telephone confirmations of transactions between and among traders and treasury operations units in different trading participants. The PDEX screen provides real-time information that makes trading transparent, timely, and cost-efficient.

The PDEX is also seen to eventually reduce the country’s dependence on foreign currency borrowings.

PDEX is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the PDS Group, with a multi-sectoral ownership base composed of the Bankers Association of the Philippines (BAP), Philippine Stock Exchange (PSE), Investment Houses Association of the Philippines (IHAP), Financial Executives Institute of the Philippines (Finex), Social Security System (SSS), Philippine American Life and General Insurance Co., San Miguel Corp., Computershare Markets Technology, and Tata Consultancy Services.